What is it about?
Many children struggle with learning to talk, but this problem can't be diagnosed until they are old enough for speech and language testing. By then, much precious time has already gone by. We wanted to find out if it is possible to prevent speech and language disorders in children who are born with a known risk for these disorders. Infants with classic galactosemia fit this description: their metabolic disease is diagnosed at birth, and their risk for speech and language disorders is known. In this pilot study, we show that of four children who received the prevention treatment, at least two show no evidence of speech or language disorder by age 2.
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Why is it important?
The results motivate a fully powered clinical trial. If we can show that prevention is more effective than the traditional approach, this will change how infants with classic galactosemia receive speech and language services in the future, and it will motivate similar studies in children with other types of risk for speech and language disorders.
Perspectives
This article was exciting to write, because our study is the first to attempt to improve speech and language outcomes by stimulating the speech and language machinery long before first words are even spoken. It will be interesting to see if our pilot results can be replicated in a larger sample.
Beate Peter
Arizona State University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Toward a paradigm shift from deficit-based to proactive speech and language treatment: Randomized pilot trial of the Babble Boot Camp in infants with classic galactosemia, F1000Research, March 2019, Faculty of 1000, Ltd.,
DOI: 10.12688/f1000research.18062.1.
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